Locksmith discovers a professional calling

Published 1:00 am, Thursday, February 16, 2006

NEWTOWN - He can pick a lock, but Rich Vallinaggi doesn't do break-ins. He does let-outs.

Vallinaggi is a locksmith, but he didn't start out as one. Originally, he was a carpenter and worked for commercial construction companies for 28 years. Then, he went to work full-time for
Pitney Bowes
in Danbury as their in-house carpenter.
But he came upon locksmithing when the company announced it needed an in-house locksmith.
"No one wanted to volunteer, so I did," Vallinaggi, 53, said. "I thought I'd try it. They were paying for the course."
The course, a year's worth of at-home study given by the Foley-
Belsaw Institute
, included hands-on practice at in Kansas City.
"I learned basic locksmithing," said Vallinaggi, who lives in New Milford. "How to take locks apart, how to re-key locks by taking the cylinder apart, generating a new key and making it work in the lock, how to make a Master Key, the one key that works for an entire floor, all the offices on a floor or up to an entire facility. We also learned how to pick locks."
With a Foley-Belsaw certificate in hand, Vallinaggi became Pitney Bowes' official in-house locksmith, but he wanted more.
"I made it clear to my bosses that I would have my own business on the side. No one objected as long as it didn't interfere with my work for them," he said.
With the company's tacit knowledge, he worked his business on a part-time basis.
Luckily for him, he had that business to fall back on when Pitney-Bowes downsized in 1995.
Vallinaggi earned a living working out of his garage and picking up jobs in the construction industry. In 2004, he purchased an existing locksmithing business in Danbury and chose Newtown for his new shop.
Vallinaggi, owner of Rich's Keys & Locks, accepts residential and commercial locksmithing jobs, as well as lock outs, lock repairs, home safes and Mul-T-Locks High Security locks.
He also stocks key blanks.
"I have key blanks for everything, more than 3,000 of them," he said, pointing to walls with pegboards loaded with them. The keys are sorted in alphabetical order by manufacturer.
"It was a pain putting them all up there," Vallinaggi said.
There are keys for modern homes, antique homes, automobiles, safety deposit boxes and older furniture keys.
"If there is a key we don't have, we have key blanks that can be cut to fit," Vallinaggi said.
They also will unlock cars.
Vallinaggi said he once opened a car with a child locked in and once unlocked a car with a dog inside.
"Every time I would get the lock open the dog would push the lock button down and relock it," Vallinaggi said. "He thought I was trying to break in. He did that three or four times before the owner managed to get him to the other side of the car so I could swing open the door."
It's that unknown and rapidly occurring changes in the field that intrigues Vallinaggi.
"There are high-end security changes that are happening and the technology of locksmithing is changing. That's going to card access and biometrics, use of eyes and fingers as forms of identification to electrically open doors," he said.
With all the changes, "a key will soon be a thing of the past," Vallinaggi added.
Despite the on-going changes in the locksmithing business and industry, Vallinaggi would recommend locksmithing as a career.
"It's interesting and challenging," Vallinaggi said. "No two days are the same. On some days, there's something new every 15 minutes."

Rich's Keys & Locks, 111 Church Hill Road,
Sandy Hook Center
, is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday.

To contact Rich Vallinaggi, call (203) 426-3984, (860) 354-8792, or (866) 426-3984. You also can e-mail him at Vallinaggi@msn.com.